Yet the current canon has stated that it will take place in the 32nd century.
Do you want to make a bet that in 50 years, Programmable Matter won't be ready?
I'll bet you a nice Hamburger Meal if we ever meet up IRL.
Want to virtual Hand Shake on that?
Ok, let me provide a different frame of reference:
The most powerful supercomputer in the world today is in China.
Lets' say it will take that supercomputer 1000 years of research to make programmable matter a practical application (as we saw it in Trek) and reach the market (though its highly unlikely the existing socio-economic system will survive the next decade if an updated study from MIT in 2012 is taken into account... nevermind the next millenium).
Now, there are AT LEAST 500 supercomputers in China alone (obviously not all of the same power/speed)... however, these systems are being upgraded on a continuous basis and quite fast.
Over the past decade alone, supercomputers that occupy same space have increased in processing capabilities by hundreds to thousands of times compared to those of just 10 years ago.
In 2010, the faster supercomputer had a computational power of 2.57 PetaFlops.
Today, the fastest supercomputer has a computational power of 415,530 PetaFlops.
And computing power (especially in the supercomputer space) has been INCREASING at larger rates in 10 year spans... because of advances in IPC, efficiency, multi-core, etc. simultaneously increasing compute power and lowering the footprint it requires.
So, let's assume that by 2030 we will experience at least a same increase in computational performance (without taking into account spintronics, use of better materials such as synthetic diamonds, carbon nanotubes, graphene, etc.).
That supercomputer from 2030 (if allocated to research programmable matter) would basically be able to finish that task 161,684 times FASTER.
Oh and Starfleet has dozens of Starships docked at HQ in the 32nd century.... all of which act as their own 'supercomputer' of sorts... which could easily be coming up with new technologies every single day... even if you don't task them entirely and just allocate a portion to work on specific tasks and network all SF ships in HQ to share data, they would still come up with new methods/technologies incredibly fast... and even without programmable matter, remote replicators could easily disassemble existing computer cores (without destroying any data in them) and just materialize new ones. Though programmable matter would likely do just that on existing cores.
Again, I don't think writers and people are really thinking big enough or fast enough.
There's nothing 'greedy' or 'too fast' about this process. Its how things work.
We could technically allocate/make 1000 equally powerful supercomputers and have them research the same thing in a networked capacity using AI or basic algorithms (which is already being done in various fields) and we'd be done in 1 year's time if we really wanted to and/or deemed it important enough to allocate those resources to.
An AI was able to repeat an experiment in 3 days that took human researchers 10 years to complete... that's about 1000 times faster.
In Trek, a simple Tricorder from the mid 22nd century would have the computational power of a supercomputer from the late 21st or very early 22nd century.
By simply allocating supercomputers with adaptive algorithms (AI or 'proper AI' too) towards specific goals, it wouldn't take us ridiculously large amounts of time to do anything.
People create huge predictions regarding construction/research time frames without even trying to take into account technologies which we already had in practice and the ability to scale things up (which today can be done with relative ease).
So, to say something will take 1000+ years to make a reality... is a humongous stretch that just doesn't jibe with how the real world works... because it actually takes an infinitesimally smaller amount of time when you expand to include the possibility of including technologies which are on the brink of being developed or are already developed.
I don't do bets... but there's a very high probability it will take us less than 50 years to make advanced programmable matter a reality (very similar/same as what Trek showed).
I think Star Wars has it right in slowing the pace of advancement down.
Time is on a far larger scale and look at how long humans took to evolve and grow from their primitive state.
Star Wars is a science fantasy with virtually 0 accuracy in terms of science or advancement.
Trek is science FICTION yes, but at least it made an effort to base itself on real life science/technology somewhat.
Humans took long to evolve and grow from their primitive state because that's how evolutionary biology works.
Science and technology don't work like that (and oh look, we have had CRISPR now for years with which we can manipulate the genome far more efficiently and get faster results than nature does).
With limited knowledge and tools, you will be at a certain state of development until you 'hit' a 'landmark' of sorts (such as say the industrial revolution), at which point, technology and science start evolving much faster until you finally hit the 'exponential' mark... its something you won't even notice initially... but over time, the results start becoming more and more apparent (at least to those of us who pay attention).
Look how long the "Bow & Arrow" reigned as the long range projectile of choice for a individual before FireArms took over.
Yes, eventually DEW (Directed Energy Weapons) will supplant Slug Throwers like FireArms, but that's a future inevitability.
Bows and arrows vs range projectiles?
Oh yes, I can definitely see how the military is still using bows and arrows (not the best example, but still)... oh wait.
One thing you are forgetting when it comes to ADOPTION of certain technologies is the culture in which people live.
If people live in a culture with old traditions (which is usually a result of poor exposure to relevant general education, critical thinking and problem solving), its very likely adoption of new technology won't be huge.
However, if you lived in a society/environment which DOES expose humans to the things I mentioned, adherence to traditions is reduced and adoption of new technology and scientific methodology can be strong.
However, you also have examples in real life of cultural traditions where adoption of newest science and technology is encouraged too... but usually, those 'traditions' are then based upon embracing newer things better.
There could be giant periods of time where for thousands of years humanity is largely the same on a similar level of tech and I wouldn't be surprised.
This applies to technologically unevolved species and periods of time mostly... and I would also attribute this (at least a good portion of it) to lack of interconnectivity (means of communication with larger groups of people).
I can see this happening on a planetary scale if a huge natural disaster struck that stripped humanity of most of its means of production and access to scientific knowledge for example... but not a space-faring species (unless it was completely wiped out from existence... in which case, that species no longer exists).
However, the Burn (in Trek) didn't do this.
It had a wide-reaching impact yes, but like with WWIII, it produced heavy casualties (according to Trek, in WWIII, 600 million with most governments and military destroyed - which arguably is a TINY number compared to even 8 BILLION - and again, millions died as a result of the Burn... but BILLIONS or TRILLIONS [in the case of the Burn] more were left alive), but it also left majority of technology and science INTACT (otherwise, Cochrane wouldn't be able to make the Phoenix to make the Warp flight and Humanity would not be able to recover after WWIII - and we saw how stingy Vulcans were with sharing their own science and technology with Humans after First Contact - which of course changed after the Federation was founded and the Vulcans only then started to share their findings and were even first to do so).
I agree, exploring beyond our Galaxy is inevitable, but we still have giant chunks of our existing Galaxy to explore, and in 3 Dimensions since space isn't "Flat", we need to stop portraying it as flat and use more 3D maps of stars and show our Galaxy in the real 3D arrangement.
Again, I agree, but this still wouldn't stop Starfleet from exploring other galaxies if say they made even V1 QS technology (nevermind V2) operational - which the writers apparently deemed that they shouldn't have (or they simply forgot about V1 and just focused on V2).
We both pointed out that even with V2 of QS (10 000 Ly's per minute) it would still take a lot of time to explore the Milky Way, but I doubt SF would pass up an opportunity to explore nearby galaxies and even go to Andromeda to see if they can fix the radiation issue the Kelvans reported... and possibly establish diplomatic relations with some species... ergo it would have been better if the Federation by the 32nd century was extra-galactic.
Some will choose to go into the science and engineering fields. Not everybody, and still only a very small percentage of the overall population. Will it be more than what we have now, yes, of course it will. But will it be a huge swath of society, nope. Academia already restricts based on quality, not quantity. No half baked Scientists are allowed.
We all know how you feel about Capitalism, no need to hide it.
I have no need to hide my thoughts about Capitalism.
Again, I didn't say majority of people would go into science and engineering fields... I said that if you ELIMINATE socio-economic limiting factors which currently leave HUGE swaths of the population in obscurity/poverty with not even an opportunity to DEVELOP an interest in that field, then yes, a much larger amount of people would pursue scientific and engineering fields.
Extrapolate that to Trek, and you're looking at an unimaginably larger amount of people being involved in science, engineering and technical fields in general(compared to today)... per species (times 4 founding species at the time when the Federation was founded... increasing to dozens over the course of 100 years... and to over 150 in late 24th century).
Plus, the way science and engineering fields are portrayed today is off-putting to many people... not very inviting.
And when you mix that with a socio-economic system that makes you pay to live, well, kids will re-evaluate what they want to do with their lives as their minds tend to be generally pushed into a direction of 'acquiring wealth and status' in society - which results in severely warped priorities and values.
As for 'no half baked scientists'... oh I agree that quality (not quantity) is important, but again, today's science and technical fields are also embroiled with the profit motive and money to the point where majority of people can't even pursue different research unless its profitable... or at least ensures them with an adequate pay (compare for example how much a physicist makes to a professional football player)... and Trek showed us numerous half-baked scientists and Starfleet personnel (especially when you consider how strict they were portrayed to be when it comes to quality.
